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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijs6yJDGm5A So I don't normally like making threads. OPs should be full of info and insight on a subject and I got none of that. I'm sure there is a ton of fascinating info about a series as prolific as YYH's between the manga and anime and the localizations. But I know nothing about any of i. But a poster in the Ranma thread encouraged posting new threads so why not. All I know is I was a Toonami/Adult Swim Kid in the early 2000s and like many others YYH has a pretty profound influence on me. And unlike with DBZ, I'm not really ashamed of how much I loved it and still love it. At the same time, it's been nearly twenty years and I have rewatched it many times. It is not quite the masterpiece I used to think of it as. I made this thread largely because I did a rewatch while housesitting for a friend of mine and it made me reflect on what I still think it does well and what I think it fails at. Like with drat near every shounen I know, the opening arc is pretty weak. The first episode is great but then it drags and drags with a lot of really dumb and forced drama. ("oh no, Botan only remembered at the absolute last second that she could talk to Keiko's hospitalized and sleeping mother! How convenient") YYH kinda bookends on badness with the first and final arc being by far the weakest parts of the whole series. Three Kings still has a lot more going for it than the first arc, however. The thing that makes Yu Yu Hakusho still hold up for me is the main protagonist. Yusuke is a fantastic character, one of the best shounen mains I've ever seen, and this is consistent from start to finish. Whatever Three Kings' failings, it's almost worth it just for that final episode. I suppose I should mention I've only watched the anime and in English dub. YYH's dub is pretty legendary and part of what got YYH on my mind in the first place was s a discussion in another SA thread where its dub was lauded as the best ever. Bold words but I can see why people feel that way. Having discussed differences between anime and manga with people elsewhere, and relating this back to Yusuke as a character, one notable difference between manga and anime is Yusuke's mother is just forgotten about in the anime after the first arc. She's with the other girls in the Dark Tournament Arc in the manga. But her absence in the anime does her no favors since the last thing she really did was leave her son covered in garbage or fail to kiss him. With Atsuko gone, I viewed Genkai as Yusuke's real mother figure, largely based on the speech he gives her after she asks him to kill her to inherit the Spirit Wave Orb. He talks about how she's the only person who ever taught him anything and overall the impression was she was the stern but loving and admirable authority figure Yusuke always needed. And then I found out all of this was added by the dub. In the sub, he just ay "I thought hard about it and nope." That's it. Same for the manga. Nothing at all about how much Genkai really means to him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zba-LNgbDVM My other dual praise/criticism is that the two humans are the best of our hero cast. I talked about Yusuke but Kuwabara is right behind him in terms of being endearing and interesting. Now, he does suffer from the conditioned response of any battle shounen character no longer being strong in that he is suddenly seen as less awesome or important. At the same time, I love the direction they went with him. It could have been done better if Togashi had actually wanted to write this arc at all but at least he spirit of it all is perfect. He and Yusuke were both young punks who grew up. Yusuke could never be a bookish type but he still grew up while Kuwabara studying hard and leaving behind childish delinquency was awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt9-2S3I3MY Kurama and Hiei by contrast mean very little to me. I think that is probably another reason I care so little about Three Kings. In keeping with a double-edge of praise and criticism, Chapter Black is the peak of the series and it's not even close. I love Sensui as a villain, I love the tone, I love how it is far more dramatic than just fight fight fight ...but its ending sucks a lot. They spent all this time building up Yusuke's and Sensui's dynamic - they're polar opposites with Sensui being a martial artist specializing in kicks, who thinks calmly, vs.Yusuke, a street fighter who loves to punch poo poo and acts on his gut (their energy attacks are even mirrors of one another) - and then it's just completely overturned and Sensui is way super stronger than Yusuke and they're gonna have a DBZ fight. And they're of course just repeating the Younger Toguro situation again with "he actually wanted to lose and die all along. This was all his REAL plan" I guess I'll conclude with this video showing off YYH's best songs. YYH is not a all time great OST like Inuyasha or other soundtracks with so many great pieces you can't count them all. More like, it has a few select songs it repeats a lot and most of the instances of those songs being used you'll forget. But by god, they are used in a few select moments and help make them unforgettable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVJCNwSeRlE In sum, I'd say on the whole YYH is a solid 8/10 with extremely high highs and not many lows. Just a lot of...not as good stuff. The dub and the music really helped.
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Jul 24, 2021 09:08
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 (A lesson on why literal translations are bad.)
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Jul 24, 2021 10:09
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One thing I will say about this show as a thoroughbred dub hater is that the dub is actually pretty good, an admission I've made a number of times that I can count on one hand Except Hiei.
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Jul 24, 2021 10:21
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Tatakai no Hate is the best OST , I will argue this one till death. I think Chapter Black had a great start and middle, but once you start getting into the cave fight with Yusuke the arc starts dragging and I really don't enjoy how all their powerups are rendered useless. With the Three Kings arc, I thought it was a really great premise, basically three powers who are so strong they are forced to politically fight things out which goes against the inherent nature of what they are. I'm okay with how it ended because of the anime's great scene where Yusuke just pushes Yomi to the edge and Kuwabara appears in the people commenting on the fight. Plus the great finale with them all at the beachside really tugs at the heartstrings. The manga's ending is really ....not as good to put it nicely
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Jul 24, 2021 12:40
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Asuron posted:Tatakai no Hate is the best OST , I will argue this one till death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kp6c8ZgfUc This, along with reuniting with Keiko and everybody, is part of my "the ending justifies the TK Arc." So 100% agreed.
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Jul 24, 2021 12:53
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I'm also just gonna put it out there I wish we had more psychic powers like Taboo or Game Master rather than the stuff we got with the Doctor or Seaman. Those were easily some of the best episodes in the show and I think Togashi agreed, because a lot of nen powers he introduced in HxH were modelled after those two where you couldn't just muscle your way through a situation, you had to play by the creator's rules with your intellect while being at a significant disadvantage.
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Jul 24, 2021 16:09
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This anime ftw. And the manga is ftw, as well. If you have not read the manga, or watched the anime, then you are in for a treat.
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Jul 24, 2021 22:37
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NikkolasKing posted:
I thought his plan all along was his normal plan except he wanted to die to the Demons as well. Heck his dying words in the manga are hopes that he will be reborn as a Demon.
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Jul 24, 2021 23:33
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I was just reminded of this while playing the Google Olympic Minigames.  I loved this anime when I was a kid and its really too bad that it got moved to like the 4:30am slot so I didn't see the whole thing until years later. The OP is also the best ever
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Jul 24, 2021 23:48
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MonsterEnvy posted:I thought his plan all along was his normal plan except he wanted to die to the Demons as well. Heck his dying words in the manga are hopes that he will be reborn as a Demon. His plan was he wanted to see the demon world. It could have been developed more but it does go with his want to see the creatures he had killed
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Jul 25, 2021 00:16
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The Sensui arc is fantastic until the twist about his personalities which completely ruins the entire dynamic he had with Yusuke and derailed one of the best fights in the series into just mindless power level crap.
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Jul 25, 2021 00:33
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It is kind of funny the whole point chapter black and three kings got cut out of the anime. It was like a two page resolution so it wasn’t that great but still
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Jul 25, 2021 00:45
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Yu Yu Hakusho is probably my favorite shonen show of the 90s. What's more, I think it has the best dub of all time, right up there with Cowboy Bebop. It set the standard as far as I'm concerned. It made me realize that most Japanese anime dialogue is actually really bad and sounds stilted if you translate it directly. Many dubs being bad is just a result of this direct translation, which loses emotional impact in other languages, and it's legitimately not the VA's fault it ends up sounding like that.
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Jul 25, 2021 11:59
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Also, those Irish and Australian accents are hilariously bad.
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Jul 25, 2021 13:59
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Wark Say posted:Also, those Irish and Australian accents are hilariously bad. that's because they're from hell-ireland and hell-australia, similar but different
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Jul 25, 2021 16:10
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Was the OVA special they released a little while after the series ended any good? Also is the YYH movie (or movies, I forget) worth watching (I’ve only seen the anime itself)?
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Jul 25, 2021 16:20
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Grabbed the whole series in a Bluray sale, solely based on the strength of HxH. We're going to start it this week.
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Jul 25, 2021 16:54
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bees x1000 posted:Grabbed the whole series in a Bluray sale, solely based on the strength of HxH. We're going to start it this week. Be sure to keep us updated with your opinions. I haven't met a newcomer to YYH...ever so I'd be very interested to hear what somebody in 2021 thinks of the series as a whole and specific parts. Do you plan to watch dub or sub?
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Jul 25, 2021 17:01
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Dub, because the internet says it's good.
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Jul 25, 2021 19:03
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Larryb posted:Was the OVA special they released a little while after the series ended any good? So for a long while, I'd only ever seen the movie and knew nothing of the series. Blockbuster had the movie (poltergeist report) for rent, and I checked it out. Surprisingly it's pretty easy to pick up the basics of the show if you don't know it. I consider it a great watch, I really liked it and years later it helped me check out the show itself.
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Jul 25, 2021 20:23
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Larryb posted:Was the OVA special they released a little while after the series ended any good? Poltergeist Report is a great shonen film, lots of great action and effects animation, and the film had so many in-betweeners and paint staff that the whole thing looks immaculate compared to the TV show, where each scene was obviously checked multiple times and color corrected, touched up, etc. The only real issue is that it's from the era where licensing companies didn't get unilateral rights to the IP, so the dub cast is pretty terrible compared to Funinations, and I recommend subs for the film. Just as an aside, I rewatched YYH this year, and it was a blast, especially paying close attention to the episodes directed by Akiyuki Shinbo (Yes, that Shinbo, from Studio Shaft) and with animation direction by Atsushi Wakabayashi. It's also interesting noting that some of the staff were clearly influenced by works at the time that don't get talked about much in the western anime sphere, such as Gosenzo-sama Banbanzai, a 6 episode OVA that had a massive influence on the anime industry in subtle ways that it definitely doesn't get enough recognition for. At so.e point in the near future Ibwant to make a thread here about it, but that's for another time. So yeah, YYH is cool, and way better than Hunter x Hunter.
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Jul 25, 2021 21:26
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I love YYH but it ain’t better than HXH. I do think some of the ideas in YYH was better refined in Hunter. Which is good
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Jul 25, 2021 21:44
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I don't think that HxH did any villain as well as they did Younger Toguro, though. Like yeah, there are a couple that come close (both in Yorknew and the Chimera Ant arcs, mainly), but holy poo poo are Younger Toguro and Shinobu Sensui so dadgum great. Also, while I enjoy the dub a great deal more, the couple of times I watched the subs, I must confess: Hearing a young (he was like 24-to-27 years old) Nobuyuki Hiyama go absolutely apeshit and yell his lungs out was something else.
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Jul 25, 2021 23:07
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Wark Say posted:I don't think that HxH did any villain as well as they did Younger Toguro, though. Like yeah, there are a couple that come close (both in Yorknew and the Chimera Ant arcs, mainly), but holy poo poo are Younger Toguro and Shinobu Sensui so dadgum great. I think the Chimera Ant King, and Hisoka live up to Younger Toguro and Sensui.
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Jul 25, 2021 23:21
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Is Hisoka a villain/antagonist past the exam, though? Like yeah, he's a murderous gently caress and that at first brings him into conflict with our big 4 mains at the start, but at times he almost feels like this sorta... crap, like Rohan post-Diamond is Unbreakable. Like this extra protagonist-sorta deal? A deuteragonist, I guess?
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Jul 25, 2021 23:32
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It's probably not very fair to compare HxH and YYH since the former isn't done, but based on what I saw of the anime, I still prefer YYH. While I really did not like the Three Kings arc for multiple reasons, I really hated Chimera Ant, and that was like a good third of the anime's runtime. There's also the core cast just appealing to me more in YYH, with Yusuke and his friends just coming off as more fun in their interactions than Gon and Killua. Both are good, and HxH definitely improves on some of the failings of YYH, but I gravitate toward the latter a lot more.
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Jul 25, 2021 23:44
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Wark Say posted:Is Hisoka a villain/antagonist past the exam, though? Like yeah, he's a murderous gently caress and that at first brings him into conflict with our big 4 mains at the start, but at times he almost feels like this sorta... crap, like Rohan post-Diamond is Unbreakable. Like this extra protagonist-sorta deal? A deuteragonist, I guess? Eh he’s more like Toguro in that he’s the villian but he’s not really plotting anything big and only fighting the protagonist for his own ends
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Jul 26, 2021 00:24
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hisoka's a serial killer in a shounen fighting manga, with shounen fighting manga sensibilities. he murders people in completely fair fights, usually after they agreed to fight him. i dunno if that was intended, but it's very clever. but as a practicing, unreformed serial killer he is definitely a villain.
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Jul 26, 2021 00:27
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I mean yeah I don’t think you can see what he does in the election arc and not see him as a bad guy
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Jul 26, 2021 00:30
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Yusuke is one of my favorite anime protagonists and I find the character dynamics between the core 4, Genkai, and the villains to be more interesting than any of the interactions between characters in HxH. Gon and Killua just never grabbed me in a way Yusuke and Kuwabara did. HxH has much better fights tho. The Everyone vs. Youpi fight in particular is amazing, especially any parts with Knuckle in it
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Jul 26, 2021 00:58
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I mean none I’d the fights in YYH were that great. People point at chapter black as DBZ esq but let’s be real, toguro was basically Frieza for that final fight
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Jul 26, 2021 01:16
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you know, yyh is the only manga i can think of that improved after reinventing itself as a fighting manga. the initial ghost stuff wasn't bad by any means, but it was still the least good part of the manga.
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Jul 26, 2021 01:17
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It’s kind of funny thinking about Hiei and knowing he was never intended to be anything more then a one shot villain, which is probably why when he is made a protagonist he never uses his super villainous demon form again.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:19
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You're a Meshi.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:22
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:you know, yyh is the only manga i can think of that improved after reinventing itself as a fighting manga. the initial ghost stuff wasn't bad by any means, but it was still the least good part of the manga. Depends honestly. The arc they introduce the Toguro brothers is the highlight of the spirit detective stuff and if it was more of that, I'd think it be pretty great. The best fights in my mind go down to anything with Kurama. Just using his wits and prevailing in totally reasonable ways, no real power level stuff going on except when he became his demon self which was sparingly used and his showdown with the Game Master is very brutal. He completely plays the kid into psyching himself out and it's hard to even fault him for it, because literally everything is on the line if he doesn't take him out. Then the immediate confrontation he has with Younger Toguro, where he lets out all the rage at having to make that decision is fantastic.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:30
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Asuron posted:
Elder Toguro. And that encounter did annoy me slightly. Elder Toguro was the strongest of Sensui’s allies, and got a bit of build up, so it was a bit anti climatic to have Kurama deal with him instantly in a way that bypasses his immortality. Honestly when I first saw it I wondered if someone would find him and free him from the plant and also wondered why Gatekeeper or Sensui did not free him.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:50
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MonsterEnvy posted:Elder Toguro. And that encounter did annoy me slightly. Elder Toguro was the strongest of Sensui’s allies, and got a bit of build up, so it was a bit anti climatic to have Kurama deal with him instantly in a way that bypasses his immortality. Honestly when I first saw it I wondered if someone would find him and free him from the plant and also wondered why Gatekeeper or Sensui did not free him. You are correct! My mistake. I personally loved it and I think he was left there by them because, like everyone else to Sensui, he was just a pawn to buy time and he did his job. No real need to remove him from the plant with his purpose served.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:58
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Also Toguro’s new mind reading did not work on Kurama for some reason, which let his plan work. It felt very rushed and anti climatic.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:06
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It was pretty funny that Kurama couldn't help but kill people in really terrible ways. All his fights end with him sucking someone's insides out, or suffering a neverending death, like he just can't help himself. Hiei is the edgy one, but he shows more mercy than Kurama did.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:19
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Momomo posted:It was pretty funny that Kurama couldn't help but kill people in really terrible ways. All his fights end with him sucking someone's insides out, or suffering a neverending death, like he just can't help himself. Hiei is the edgy one, but he shows more mercy than Kurama did. Doesn't Hiei even have a quote in the Dark Tournament where he says something to the effect of "People think I'm the evil one of the group, but man, don't ever make Kurama mad"?
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Jul 26, 2021 05:14
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